Red Wall Cavern
Ocotillo
Is that Mt McDowell?
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument
Today's a day of impending change; change of place, change of time, change of promise, change of venue. A change is in the wind.
On August 31 I will end my contract here in Mesa. I will leave the home of the dark helicopters and return to my aboriginal homeland. It is a bittersweet melancholy, the taste of the desert in my mouth, the windblown dust of an Haboob riding on the toe nails of a monsoon, potentially a thunderstorm, the smell of ozone in the air. The knowledge that Sunday's hike to Hackberry Springs may be the last time I get to walk through that steep canyon made up of the tuf layer with it's lichen orange and green-- a castled epiphany to the desert's glory. Me, literally walking in a huge river bed, an absolutely dry river bed in a lush green desert, surrounded by this glory. Arizona has grown to become part of me -- it has become part of who I am. I am going to miss it here. Jill sums it up really well.
Although the wind has a name in Southern California -- the famous Santa Ana wind -- the wind in Northern California remains nameless. It has no name. Perhaps that nameless wind will blow me back this way again. Perhaps it is just called fog.
Date: 28 July 2006
Miles Riding: 10.69
Weather: 92°F.
Bike: Road
Ipod: Indigo Girls, Walk Away
July Bike Mileage: 95.16
2 comments:
Very nicely said, Shawn. Congrats on the impending transition. I feel your sense of loss in your words and pictures, but change is always exciting. Here's to adventure!
There's just no end to the adventure. The early plan puts me on a bike in San Francisco with a camera. That means urban biking and bike-centric events like critical mass, and serious hill climbing in traffic ... and that there will be a lot more people in the photos.
I saw a lot of people there on bikes and it was cool.
I figure there are two kinds of adventure, one to leave civilization and the other to move toward it.
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